Microsoft itself was sued for PTSD over their anti-child porn efforts.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/11/microsoft...

"That must've been a pretty disgusting story to investigate."

Please, this is limited to law enforcement. DO NOT TRY TO INVESTIGATE THIS yourself. Looking and finding CP could be considered a crime already in your jurisdiction.

At the same time, citizen investigations can be powerful things.

Investigating corporations for flippantly allowing child abuse materials to be indexed and distributed on their platforms should never be illegal. The fact that Israeli investigators did this research, rather than Americans (Google is an American company) shows that our own low enforcement clearly isn't doing it's job here.

I have a toolchain for finding child abuse content on Youtube, and I use it to report videos to Youtube for takedown. It's absolutely insane that I can be held criminally responsible for finding this content - but Youtube is immune from consequences hosting it.

Some of the videos I have found had millions of views.

Many that I have reported have not been taken down.

Yup. I knew someone who did this at BlackBerry. Very emotionally taxing work. Thankless too.

I had a gig that was adult-industry-adjacent and the constant exposure to plain-jane porn became exhausting; I cannot imagine what this work is like.

Radiolab did an episode[0] last year where they talked to Facebook content moderators.

[0]: https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/post-no-evil

I mean how many shares of seeing folks beaten or even executed before it gets to you.

Me ... 1.

I’m still haunted by some of the things I stumbled across many years ago when I was exploring FTPs just to see what I could find. That all ended the day a video labeled “AMV 1” turned out to be (at least the few seconds I saw) a very young boy tied up and being raped. I reported anonymously to the FBI, but even then it was clear they were overwhelmed and I never heard back.

If I had to see that kind of thing as a job, I’d die.

My friend is on the other side of this fence, FBI agent, that's had to conduct surveillance of child pornographers after tips like this to collect sufficient evidence to prosecute. Luckily, he was eventually transferred into a white collar crime division.

There are a lot of revolting, but vital jobs out there. Hats off to those with the psychological disposition to handle them, even if not sustainable in the long term.

When I was looking at which professional direction to take, I started looking at government jobs (mostly law enforcement) and spoke with some industry people. My take was: Get prepared to look at a LOT of ugly stuff. Also heard horror stories that just thinking about it, makes me want to puke and punch somebody at the same time.

I have several LE friends including a homicide investigator. The common refrain is “you loose faith in humanity”.

Which consequently, is why mental health for LE is of the utmost importance. Frankly it’s a public safety issue.

Hiring people, who don’t find child porn objectionable, to make decisions on whether reported child porn is objectionable, will have some drawbacks.

Easy enough to test them with moderator uploaded material that only they can see.

The more I think about this, you can have a serialized A->B filter. Filter A is the large group of convicted pedos. They won't likely be as traumatized as the B group. The B group is the existing moderators and will get whatever the A group missed. The A group should minimize the PTSD impact on the B group.

> Looks like some folks prefer they work around children instead.

Holy mother of all false dichotomies...

Are there children inside coal mines? There better fucking not be. So throw them into coal mines, and may black lung take them.

I said leader of the free world. They will choose to not work in the coal mine and prefer places with kids. They have served their time so we have to give them options they will choose.

I'm trying to figure out what the hell is going on inside your head. Child predators that get released from prison can and do have restrictions on employment placed on them. They're not allowed to work with kids. Are you unaware of that or something? Do you actually oppose that? I can't figure out your angle here, but you're distressing me.

I came up with a valid solution to a real world problem. Denial just continues such problems. That is where my head is. Pragmatic viable solutions. I oppose doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Today they are most certainly allowed to work in places that have children, just not places that specifically meant for children such as schools. The moderation room at microsoft does not have children.

I never said to roll back existing restrictions. I feel that I am being projected on. Perhaps this topic is too emotionally charged for HN.

> I came up with a valid solution to a real world problem.

No, you absolutely did not. The real solution, which has already been arrived upon, is to legally forbid pedophile felons from working with or around kids. Rolling that back is not 'pragmatic', it's fucking moronic. Feeding their fantasies by paying them to look at pornography is the worst idea I've heard in a LONG time. You are seriously creeping me out.

> The real solution, which has already been arrived upon, is to legally forbid pedophile felons from working with or around kids

That doesn't stop them, especially if they have not been convinced of a crime. Instead giving them the option to get paid to look at said images will make a lot of potential criminals get a job away from any children - plus they won't be getting PTSD from looking at them, unlike non-pedophile operators.

> Feeding their fantasies by paying them to look at pornography is the worst idea I've heard in a LONG time

Mind if I ask why? It's not like most of them are not already looking at CP.

Funny, I was thinking sociopaths. Most sociopaths aren't criminals, but wouldn't be affected by the material.